


the girl with red hair

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2015 [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Torchwood
Genre: Assassins, Community: wishlist_fic, Dubious Morality, Future Fic, Gen, Immortality, Not Beta Read, Old Jack, Post Series, Prompt Fic, Some Comic Canon, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:41:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5415608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Natasha and Jack have a past that matters even when it doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the girl with red hair

**Author's Note:**

> For _kerrykhat_ who asked for MCU/DW, Jack and Natasha, _you cannot destroy your past, nor what it does to you. It's not ever, really, over._
> 
> I hope you like it. It took me a few tries, but I'm fond of this.

+

“Here’s to killing alien spawn and looking good while doing it!” Tony crowed, hoisting his glass high enough for a splash of amber liquid to hit Bruce, making the other scientist grimace. 

Steve immediately started dabbing at everything with napkins, while Clint sniggered and took pictures in the background. Thor, oblivious to it all, wrapped an arm around Tony and joined him in drinking.

Needless to say, the post-apocalypse celebration was well underway. Natasha watched her hapless boys with one eye as she slunk along the edges of the room to where the true hero of the evening was sitting, taking in the sights with an expression she knew meant he didn’t intend to sleep alone tonight. 

With a poke to his ribs she climbed onto the barstool next to him, elbows coming to rest on the countertop as she leaned into it, smirking at him. “Enjoying the party?” she drawled. 

Jack raised his own glass in a much more sober mimicry of Tony and offered, “There’s good whiskey and hot people. What more can a man want?”

Since he’d helped them enter an alien warship headed for Earth and single-handedly rigged the entire thing to explode without anyone coming to harm, saving more or less the entire human race, Natasha guessed there wasn’t much he was missing tonight. Good deeds always settled in her stomach like good alcohol, warm and comfortable, going to her head just enough to make the world seem a bit fuzzier than usual. They mellowed her. 

She knew Jack felt the same way. 

Tonight was a good night. 

Tonight, they were good people. 

Jack polished off his glass, then swung his stool around to mirror her pose and they spent a while watching the Avengers and their various friends and family members make fools of themselves. Jane and Darcy were doing shots on the couch, Pepper was trying to have a conversation with Dr. Selvig, Rhodey and Sam were one-upping each other with flyboy stories and Maria was watching them all with an expression that said she didn’t want to admit to liking them all. 

“This is a good place,” the man beside her finally offered and Natasha almost startled at the sincerity in his voice. Jack didn’t often sound so quietly open. Usually, he was all about the noise and the flash, the jokes and the glamour. He was the reason she’d seen through Tony so readily when she’d first met the madman in his suit of armor. He and Jack wore the same masks. 

She hummed her agreement before hoisting herself over the bar briefly to grab a bottle of expensive vodka and two glasses. She didn’t ask Jack before filling his to the brim. They clinked their drinks together and downed their shots without hesitation.

Natasha poured another round. 

“Did you tell them?” she asked, after they were gone. 

The alcohol was spreading through her limbs, making her shoulders feel tight and her elbows burn. The sensation would pass and the buzz would be gone within minutes, damn her accelerated metabolism, but for now, it felt good. Comfortable. 

“What?” Jack asked, languidly stretching, a little smirk appearing on his face as he noticed Jane and Darcy drunkenly tracking his movements. “That you and I used to kill people all over the galaxy for a whole lot of money? Sweetheart, I think they know what you used to do for a living by now.”

After all, they call her the Black Widow, still, even if that life is more than a decade past. 

Natasha shakes her head. “They know about Red Room, the KGB. They don’t know about what came… after.”

That brief period (almost a decade, in Earth time), between quitting the KGB and joining SHIELD. She’d disappeared with a handsome man with a smile like sex and come back less than a week later, her hair much longer and her shoulders less hunched. Freer. 

To this day, she didn’t think anyone knew she’d been gone at all, much less that she’d gone galaxy hopping with a man out of time for nothing but shits, giggles and a whole lot of mayhem. Jack was many things, had been many things when he’d picked her up in a bar in Prague. 

He’d meant for it to be one job, had needed a female partner and looked up the infamous Red Death on a whim. They’d killed their way across seven systems and three and a half millennia for the next decade.

And what did it matter? Natasha didn’t age like a normal human, thanks to the Red Room, and Jack didn’t age at all, thanks to something he never spoke of, except in a language she didn’t understand. They’d made good money, had good fun. 

Back then, she hadn’t cared that she’d been killing people. 

Now, though….

SHIELD and the people in it had changed her. Slowly but surely, something like a conscience had seeped back in. Saving people suddenly felt better than killing them. Helping some felt better than bringing them down. And those boys…

She chanced a look at them, found Tony and Clint trying to climb Thor for some reason, while Steve and Sam tried to stop them and Rhodey and Bruce watched, grinning from ear to ear.

Standing next to them, in battle and out of it, made her want to be better. Made her want to be like them, doing good things for good reasons. 

She knew they didn’t mean to, but their mere presence made Natasha feel ashamed some days, of who she’d been. 

Before she’d met Clint, she hadn’t known she was capable of shame. 

“So I’m your dirty secret?” he asked and there was an edge to it that told her he didn’t like the idea at all. For all that she’d known Jack for years, she knew that she didn’t really _know_ him at all. He didn’t age, but he changed like the seasons, made himself fit his surroundings. It was the mark of a good conman, his innate ability to blend, but it also meant that he’d made himself entirely unknowable. 

She punched him in the shoulder. It was something she’d learned from the boys. Simple companionship. Easy teasing, without the sexual undertones Jack managed to put into _everything_. “Of course not. They know I know you. They don’t need to know what we did together.”

It was his turn to hum as he refills their glasses. “So I’m your dirty secret,” he summarized after drinking. 

“Jack…” she warns, but can’t quite meet his gaze. 

“Natalia.” He said her name with a Russian twang to it, speed where English put stress. She hadn’t heard it spoken like that in years, hadn’t been Natalia at all in ages. Natalie had been as close as she’d gotten since she’d parted ways from the man beside her, and Natalie hadn’t lasted long at all.

He topped off their glasses yet again, passed hers back to her. “I’m going to give you some free advice, kid,” he informed her, between sipping his vodka like it was water. 

“Don’t call me that. I’m older than most people in this room.”

Fifty, almost, not that you’d know, from looking at her. A few people in SHIELD were aware, mostly those in medical, but to everyone else, Natasha was turning thirty in a few weeks. Again. 

A snort. “The oldest person in this room isn’t even a hundred, sweetheart. You’re all kids. Until you’ve reached the quadruple digits, don’t tell me not to call you that,” he ordered, sounding detached. Cold. A thousand years old? Natasha tried and failed to imagine such a time span. To put herself into it. Would she live that long? Would Cap?

No. For all that they apparently didn’t age, they could still be killed. Hurt them badly enough, damage them enough, and they’d be gone. Jack… Jack had been blown up before, had been turned to nothing more than bone fragments and ashes, and he’d come back. 

“How old are you?”

“Ask my Doctor. I’ve lost track. But old enough for that free advice. So listen.”

He paused, obviously waiting for her to give some sort of agreement, so she sighed, nodded. Across the room, Tony and Clint had finally toppled Thor and were roaring their victory like a pair of toddlers on the monkey bars.

“It’s not going to go away. You can not talk about it, you can even forget it, but you can’t get rid of it. Your entire past is part of you and it’s never really over. Be ashamed of it, be proud of it, it’s still _there_. It’s who you are. Fighting that is only going to make life a lot harder than it has to be.”

“So what? Let it go? Let it be? Meditate and find serenity?” She couldn’t help but snort derisively. 

Jack flapped both hands. “I didn’t say it was easy. God knows, it took me a couple millennia and some very insistent ass-kicking from an old friend to get to this point. I just thought I’d give you a leg up, little girl.”

He smirked at her then, his rogue smirk, the one that promised adventure and violence and diamonds and laughter. His conman’s grin. 

She rolled her eyes at him. “Look me up in a century and we’ll see,” she allowed, but added, “and for now, shut up about it.”

“Aye aye, Ma’am!” He chuckled, humoring her. Then he stood, snapping his ever present suspenders back into place and offered her his hand. “Would you do me the honor of this dance, ma’am?”

Obviously, the serious portion of the evening is over. Still, Jack had always been good to her, always been kind. She owed him this much. “It’s not you. It’s what I was back then.” 

His bright smile dimmed some, grew smaller. “You were magnificent.”

“That’s the problem.”

“You made an old man happy, keeping him company. Nothing wrong with that,” he told her, intentionally missing the point and she knew she wasn’t going to get him back on track. When Jack decided he was done with something, he was _done_. He’d said his piece and now he wouldn’t hear any more of it. Stubborn old idiot. 

Finally, she accepted his hand, let him pull her to her feet and into a simple one-two dance to the lounge music JARVIS was playing for them. Tony wolf whistled, so Natasha flipped him off when Jack dipped her and everyone laughed.

“Can I?” Jack suddenly asked.

“Mhm?”

“Look you up in a century.” He pulled her back up, swung her around and steered them away from her friends with sure steps. His eyes were on hers and there were lines around them, small and tight. They’d been there for as long as she’d known him. Being old enough to consider a thousand years young, living with all his past, he had to be incredibly lonely. Maybe that was why he’d kept her with him for so long, because god knew, he hadn’t really needed her for the jobs. Possibly not even for the first one. 

He’d confessed once, in a drunken stupor, that he could feel other long-lived people, like a buzz under his skin. That he could feel her. Maybe all he’d wanted was companionship, just for a while.

“Look me up,” she allowed with a quirk of her lips, hitching herself a bit closer to him. “Maybe I’ll be ready to listen by then.”

A snort. “Right. Because you’re the type for it.”

Delicately, Natasha sunk her stiletto heel into his instep, a smile on her face. Jack winced. “Mercy?”

“Well,” she considered, “you did just help save the world. So I guess I can be nice to you. Just for tonight.”

They both knew he wasn’t going to stick around much longer than that, anyway.

“Okay,” Jack chuckled, leading her into something more complicated as the music sped up. He pressed his cheek to hers, mouth against her ear. “You still are, by the way.”

“What?”

“Magnificent.”

This time when he dipped her, everyone applauded. 

+


End file.
